Adherents.com: Religious Groups in Literature

34,420 citations from literature (mostly science fiction and fantasy) referring to real churches, religious groups, tribes, etc. [This database is for literary research only. It is not intended as a source of information about religion.]

"..attic floor with indifference; Swift, Tennyson, Carroll, Verne, Dumas, Gibbon, Colonel Ingram, Shakespeare, Homer, Khayyam and the unknown creators of myth and legend of all lands had been his advisers and companions and playmates... " [Carroll: author of Alice in Wonderland.]

science fiction - Alice in Wonderland

USA

1949

Jackson, Shirley. "Afternoon in Linen " in The Lottery and Other Stories. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux (1998; first published 1949); pg. 97.

"...Mrs. Lennon, who was the little girl's grandmother, in a white linen dress, and Mrs. Kator's little boy, Howard, in a blue linen shirt and shorts. Like in Alice Through the Looking-Glass, the little girl thought, looking at her grandmother; like the gentleman all dressed in white... "

Pg. 63: "He nodded. 'She still thinks she's a spy and her code name is White Rabbit. White Rabbit, Alice in Wonderland, so she's looking to go down the rabbit hole I guess...' "; Pg. 64: "With it, hooked to the subject and to the Looking Glass device, it would allow a subject, or as many as might be networked to the single Looking Glass device, to alter or create a variance or a series of variances in the base reality. "; Pg. 124: "...but I couldn't remember much of anything beyond the Walt Disney videotape. I wasn't even sure I actually ever had read it--not Through the Looking-Glass, anyway. Alice, yeah, at some point. . . . " [Other refs., not in DB, e.g., pg. 122-124, 132-135. 178-180, 223, 226, 280, etc.]

science fiction - Alice in Wonderland

USA

1996

Powers, Tim. Expiration Date. New York: Tor (1996); pg. 32.

"If unpredictable turbulence has become a real, constant factor in traffic, then all the maps and clocks are broken (like the Mad Hatter's butter-clogged watch!) and you can only make a hazy guess about how far it might be from one point to another. "

Pg. 248: "Black holes may be entrances to Wonderland. But are there Alices or white rabbits? "; Pg. 263: Chapter 39, entitled "Starfolk: The Cosmic Cheshire Cats "; "They are called 'black holes.' They are beasts akin to the smile on the Cheshire cat. They are enormous stars that have winked out but are still there. "

Pg. 1: "I felt vaguely uneasy, though I couldn't say why. It did not seem all that unusual to be drinking with a White Rabbit, a short guy who resembled Bertrand Russell, a grinning Cat, and my old friend Luke Raynard, who was singing in Irish ballads while a peculiar landscape shifted from mural to reality at his back. Well, I was impressed by the huge blue Caterpillar smoking the hookah atop the giant mushroom because I know how hard it is to keep a water pipe lit. Still, that wasn't it. It was a convivial scene, and Luke was known to keep pretty strange company on occasion. So why should I feel uneasy? "; Pg. 9: "Tweedledum, Tweedledee, the Dodo, and the Frog began packing their instruments... the White Rabbit beat it down a hole to the rear... " [Other refs., not in DB., incl. pg. 2-5, etc. The Cat appears to be a major character.]

science fiction - Alice in Wonderland

world

1987

Zelazny, Roger. Sign of Chaos. New York: Arbor House (1987); pg. 64.

"I went on for a long while then, partly because I had to stop and summarize Lewis Carroll. I also had to promise her the loan of one of the Thari editions of Alice from the Amber library. "

'I daresay you haven't had much practice,' said the Queen. 'When I was your age, I always did it for half-an-hour a day. Why, sometimes I've believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.'

"In her mid-twenties, The White Rabbit was an attractive woman who looked more like a disgruntled Playboy Bunny than a super-villain, dressed in white go-go boots and a one-piece bathing suite, over which were worn the sort of plaid vest, gold pocketwatch, and blue velvet waistcoat that might have attired her anthropomorphic namesake in the classic story Alice in Wonderland; a ridiculous pair of artificial bunny ears protruded from her shoulder-length hair; and a fluffy tail was sewn into the back of her swimsuit, just above her posterior. "

"'...Every man, they said, must face reality. Must face the Here and Now! Everything that was not so must go. All the beautiful literary lies... So they lined them up against a library wall out Sunday morning thirty years ago, in 1975... The Beanstalk died in a bramble of red tape!... And they made Alice drink something from a bottle which reduced her to a size where she could no longer cry 'Curiouser and curiouser,' and they gave the Looking glass one hammer blow to smash it and every Red King and Oyster away!' "

Pg. 178: "'The White Queen,' she said, 'is the character invented by Charles Dodgson, a nineteenth-century mathematician who was intrigued by nonsense theory. You may have seen an anime. The White Queen's peculiarity is that she screams before she's hurt. To save time.'

'Thanks. I'm familiar with the works of Lewis Carroll.' ";

Pg. 223: "I started the royal character names. Of course, that appealed to me. Braemar was the one who brought in the Lewis Carroll references. We have been known around for much longer than any wire-tapper knows. "; Pg. 225: "'You're the White Queen: Who's the Red Queen?' "

"There seemed to be a continuous spectrum between absolute fantasy and hard historical facts, with every possible gradation between... At the other extreme were Zeus and Alice and King Kong and Gulliver..., who could not possibly have existed in the real world. But what was one to make of Robin Hood and Tarzan and Christ...? "

"'...You know, when I was a little boy my grandmother used to read a book to me, an ancient book that I guess has been completely forgotten by now, a book called Alice in Wonderland. About a little girl three or four hundred years ago who follows a rabbit down a hole and lands in a world where everything is completely absurd, except no one knows it's absurd so they all take it terribly seriously. This is like something right out of that book. Or the sequel. Alvin in Wonderland, I could call it. Although I think there already is a sequel, actually.' Magdescu was speaking very rapidly now, almost wildly. 'Should I take this seriously, this set of upgrade schematics? It's all a joke, isn't it?'

"In the meantime, she was getting along famously with 'Sinbad,' which was the private name she had given her tattoo. After all, he (it was definitely a he, it had strong male energy) had appeared out of nowhere, like his storybook namesake venturing out on one of his many Arabian Nights voyages.

Sinbad was still nestled between her breasts. He'd been there for a while... " [Other refs., not in DB.]

"The room to which they came was large and magnificent in contrast to the plainness of all they had seen so far. The wall hangings and the floor covering were of luxurious fabric that gave the Earthmen the impression of a palace room out of the Arabian Nights. "

"The object was a huge tent that looked like one of those he'd seen in Arabian Nights movies. Caliph Haroun al-Rashid's or Aladdin's. It was scarlet with strange green, yellow, black, and white symbols on it, with a wide entrance over which she drapes fell, with symbol-bearing flags fluttering in a light breeze. " [More.]

"Captain Picard gazed out the window at a sight that might have inspired Scheherazade and the authors of One Thousand and One Arabian Nights. The sky between two immense yellow prisms was dotted with what appeared to be flying carpets, undulating in the breeze... "

science fiction - Arabian Nights

galaxy

2981

Anthony, Piers. Blue Adept. New York: Ballantine (1981); pg. 315.

"'The Computer established the script... This one was based on a tale of the Arabian Nights, 'The Afreet's Beauty Contest.' Citizens tended to favor Arabian motifs, associated with the presumed opulence of ninth- and twentieth-century Arabian culture.

Stile had the role of Kamar Al Zaman, a bachelor prince, and Red the part of Princess Budur, Moon of Moons. Stile was not familiar with this particular story, but had a foreboding about it. These Arabian tales could get pretty fundamental. This one was obviously a romance, and the last thing he could stomach was a Game of Love with the enemy he had sworn to destroy. But there was no clean way out, now. " [Much more material along these lines, pg. 315-327.]

science fiction - Arabian Nights

galaxy

3099

Simmons, Dan. Endymion. New York: Bantam (1996); pg. 400.

"Mashhad was a strange mixture of modern city and bazaar from The Thousand and One Nights, a wonderful series of stories Grandam used to tell me... "

[As the title alludes to, this novel's central plot element is the series main character (Sir James Eckert, the brave Dragon Knight) a conflict with a legendary Djinn, or genie, from Arabian Nights lore. The cover blurb reads: "Arabian Night vs. Dragon Knight! "; Cover jacket: "Sir James Eckert--the brave Dragon Knight--is promised a simple quest. Sir Brian Neville-Smythe asks that Jim accompany him to the Holy Land in search of his betrothed's long-lost father--for only with the old man's consent can Sir Brian wed his beloved. But the Holy Land holds more than any of them bargained for. Full of pirates, sea giants, and the legendary Djinn, this 'simple quest' is about to become the most dangerous odyssey the Dragon Knight has ever undertaken. For the Djinn hold ore power over good and evil than even the most powerful magicians. Including Sir James himself. . . " [Refs. throughout novel, not in DB.]

"Brennan looked around. They were the only people in the room, which looked like something out of an Arabian Nights' fantasy. There were rich, colorful carpets on the floor, and brocaded silk tapestries, half of them featuring maidens, half featuring slim young men in Grecian outfits... There were numerous sculptures in a similar vein scattered around the room on delicate, expensive furniture, and the bed was canopied, with silk and velvet cushions, and throw pillows scattered around. "

"He was not surprised that the ever-changing landscapes below them were straight out of legend. Ali Baba had waved angrily at them, as they overtook his flying carpet, shouting, 'Can't you see where you're going!' Yet he must be a long way from Baghdad, because the dreaming spires over which they now circled could only be Oxford. "

science fiction - Arabian Nights

Transylvania

1897

Stoker, Bram. Dracula. New York: Bantam (1981; c. 1897); pg. 31.

"It was by this time close to morning, and we went to bed. (Mem., this diary seems horribly like the beginning of the 'Arabian Nights,' for everything has to break off at cockcrow--or like the ghost of Hamlet's father.) "

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